The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of...

"During the Great Depression, wretched labor camps crop up in remote areas of the expansive pine forests throughout the American South. Destitute workers live and toil under terrible conditions to harvest pine gum, hacking into tree trunks, drawing out the sticky sap that gives the Tar Heel State its nickname, and hauling it to stills to be refined into turpentine. Subsistence living means racking up huge debts they are forced to work off, creating...

"The Nazis have forced Natia and Teodor from their Polish farm to a labor camp. Separated, Natia is chosen to be the housekeeper for the camp's overseer, and her husband Teodor is sent to work in the factory. Despite the strict camp rules--and the consequences for disobeying them--Natia finds a way to communicate with Teodor by sending messages through song as she passes Teodor's dormitory. But then Natia finds a Jewish orphan on the overseer's doorstep....

The poor but proud Dunne family and their friends struggle to survive on the dust-plagued prairies of the Oklahoma Panhandle, but discover bitter disappointment in the orchards and vineyards of the so-called promised land of California.